Brenda Garvard Good Plume and Charmaine White Fac
Helping the Tituwan/Lakota/Sioux of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
South Dakota, U.S.A.
My name is Brenda Aplin. I was born in 1952 near Nottingham in the East Midlands of the UK, but have lived in the South West in Devon for over 30 years now.
I founded Lakota Aid over five years ago ,and for the past six years have been working with the Oglala, Lakota people on the Pine Ridge reservation , trying to help improve the lives of just a few , most of the people living in third world conditions. Look over my website for more details :- www.lakota-aid.co.uk
My main aim has been to spread the word as far and as wide as I can, about the plight of the Lakota,by putting things out on my website both on their behalf, but also details and facts that I have seen and heard first hand from several trips to Pine Ridge.
I have done several talks on my work in the UK and will continue to do this. If anyone would like me to come and do a talk, then please contact me via the website. I have a list of Elders on my website, and any funds made on the night can be donated to an Elder/Elders of your choice.
I am trying to do much more research into several issues on the people and reservation life. The Lakota are swept under the carpet by the US government, and have been for over a hundred years, and the situation out there is well and truly kept under wraps which is totally unacceptable and inhumane!!!
The reservation is about 11,000 square miles in area and is the largest of the Lakota reservations. It a very beautiful, but also a very barren and unforgiving land. The Lakota once existed in these lands, along with the buffalo very successfully. They were skillful hunters and knew how to survive extremely well. The buffalo were almost exterminated in the late 19th century, to starve the people into submission, and the people forced onto the reservations (they call them POW camps!!), and their natural way of life stripped away from them. They can no longer hunt and live as they once did, instead they now live in terrible poverty and misery and the world does not seem to know or care!!
This is what I am trying to do in spreading the awareness that the Lakota people do still exist and are fighting for their very survival in a country that is called ‘The Land of the Free’. Got to be a moral to this somewhere!!
I, like everyone else struggle to survive, but I count my blessings that I at least live pretty comfortably compared to the Lakota people, many live in such remote areas and in such battered old trailers or wooden shacks, that if you drove through the reservation roads you would not even know they were there! The rolling hills of this Mid West State of South Dakota hide the truth, but it still does not alter the fact that the people are living there and dying there because no help is given to them.
How many times are the Native Americans mentioned in the Live Aid concerts etc??? Any charity event for that matter?? The United Nations do not even back them and this makes me so angry. I call them ‘The Forgotten People’ and this is exactly the case.
I am trying to do more research into the healthcare (or should I say lack of it!!), high infant mortality rate, chronic diabetes and alcohol problems, lack of fac
Garvard Good Plume, Charmaine White Face and Vince
ilities and industries on the reservation (the unemployment is 85-95%), care facilities for the elderly, and also how the Native War Veterans are cared for compared to the white sector. Also there is a major health problem with the radioactive waste left leaching into the Black Hills and surrounding land and water courses for over 50 years, that has caused rare cancers and may other problems to the people over time and still to this day also. This is only scratching the surface of the problems on Pine Ridge!
Native Americans, including women, fought in the World wars, Vietnam, Korea and right now in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are now, and always have been very proud to fight for ‘Their’ country. It has been archeologically proven that the native peoples have lived in the Americas for well over 12,000 years (new evidence is pushing these boundaries back even further in time), and yet the US governments etc are still insistent it is ‘Their Land’, and have broken in the past, and continue still today, to break every Treaty that was ever made between the white and the Lakota.
I would like to go back to Pine Ridge much more often that I have been able to so far to continue this research. This will take time and the more often I can get over there, and hopefully for longer periods of time, the better. This research will I feel prove invaluable in spreading the word even farther and wider than I have been able to do so far, and I will not give up until people start listening and decide to recognise the Lakota people as a unique race of people, with traditions and ceremonies that should not die out, and that they should be treated as human beings, the same as you and I!!!! Racial predujice towards the people is high believe me, I have witnessed this for myself many times , another situation they have to cope with, and again this is disgraceful. We could all learn so much from the Lakota’s traditional ways and their understanding on nature and how to keep balance and harmony with our Mother Earth. It saddens them so much to see the Earth being treated so badly, no respect at all.
I appeal to anyone that cares to look over my website, and also the site of a group of Lakota that fight tirelessly for the rights of their people and to stop the destruction of their sacred sites, including the Black Hills.
www.defendblackhills.org
I work very closely with this organisation and am very proud to do so. I believe in everything they stand for and will continue to help spread the word of the truth that is happening to the Lakota people.
My two main contacts are Garvard Good Plume and Charmaine White Face and they are my brother and sister in my heart (see photo).
If anyone can help me towards my airfares and costs for future trips to Pine Ridge, that would be wonderful. As we all know the cost of travelling is going up and up at an alarming rate, so any help at all with my travel expenses will enable me to continue in my research and I thank you in anticipation.
Please contact me via my website for this, or to enquire about my talks, or any other information you would like to know, and thank you for taking the time to read this article.
I wish everyone love and light and happiness.
Brenda- www.lakota-aid.co.uk
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